Earlier this autumn I was asked to prepare a lecture for Oxford Brookes University. Sadly, it was never presented for a variety of reasons. So, for any reader of this blog that would like a longer than normal post to read over the holiday period, I have published the text of the lecture below.
Best wishes for the holiday season to all my readers and thank you for the continued support of this blog.
Brookes Autumn Talk 2022
Teacher Supply in Oxfordshire – does the market model work?
Thank you for once again inviting me to talk to you about my special subject: the labour market for teachers. Last time, I started with history, this time I thought I might concentrate on geography. More specifically, the geography of Oxfordshire, its schools and their need for teachers and school leaders to staff them and what implications this might have for policy makers, were they willing to listen.
First, a bit of background. As many of you know, the government has always had a key role to play in managing the supply of teachers to schools through its grip on the teacher preparation market.
The DfE’s Teacher Supply Model tries to predict how many teachers need to be trained each year in order to ensure a sufficient supply of new teachers to provide staffing for schools across England. The Model is a national model, and does not consider regional differences.
Another drawback of the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model is that it doesn’t consider the backgrounds of entrants to ITT. Are they undergraduate; recent graduates; career changers or teachers from overseas requiring QTS to be fully accredited to teach in England?
Some of you may recall the Carter Review and its look at ITT. In my submission to that Group, I made the point that now all those considering teaching were from the same backgrounds or stages in their careers:
So, consider these individuals thinking about teaching as a career: (Blog 23rd June 2014)
Jane is a recent graduate, age 22, with an upper second degree in modern history. Since GCSE she has studied no history pre-1472. She wants to teach history in a secondary school.
Kevin is a 28-year-old policeman who is looking to change careers to work with young people in a positive way. He has a lower second-class degree in forensic science, and wonders what he might teach in the secondary sector
Helen is a 35-yearold mum with two school-age children. She has a degree in physics, and since the birth of her own children she has volunteered a day a week at a local primary school. She is interested in teaching children at Key Stage 1.
Wayne is studying for his ‘A’ levels in media studies, photography and theatre studies. He is 20 and had a chequered history as a teenager, but now wants to become a teacher and put something back into society.
Of the four all have different needs, and some are better served by the present routes than others.
Jane would have the option to select from the two School Direct routes, (assuming that the Salaried route is still operational) a higher education course, a SCITT course or Teach First. As history is a popular subject, attracting more applicants than places, she might be told by some course providers to acquire some experience of schools in a voluntary capacity before being considered. If she applied after Christmas for courses starting in September, she would probably find her options severely limited. In most cases she would find herself having to pay another set of tuition fees to study unless she was lucky enough to be accepted on either the Teach First programme or to find a School Direct salaried place.
Kevin has a degree that doesn’t fit a National Curriculum subject, so would either need to find a means of enhancing his subject knowledge or find a provider that felt he had enough science to be accepted onto a course. However, since the government split the sciences into the separate subjects of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, the general science courses that might have accepted him have largely disappeared.
His work experience might count in his favour, especially if he had worked with young people, but his chances might depend upon when he applied. If he applied early in a recruitment round, he might fare badly as providers might expect more suitable candidates with better subject knowledge would apply later in the recruitment round.
However, if, later in the round, applications were sluggish, he might fare better, especially if he interviewed well. He would not be eligible for Teach First, but would receive some financial support if he trains to teach a physical science subject. However, he would be looking at a sizeable reduction in pay for at least a year while training even if he found a School Direct salaried place.
Helen wants to teach children at the younger end of the primary school. Although Helen has a Physics degree that isn’t likely by itself to put her near the front of the queue because currently there is no requirement for providers of primary training to consider recruiting a balance of candidates with different subject backgrounds.
Assuming Helen has the basic GCSE qualifications required much may depend upon what point in the recruitment cycle Helen applies and her three choices of provider.
Although she may not have studied any arts or humanities subjects for more than half her lifetime that probably won’t matter. She will receive basic training during her course. The time she has spent as a volunteer may help her be accepted if the head provides a good reference.
Wayne has selected ‘A’ levels that limit his chances of becoming a secondary school teacher because there are few training places to teach drama, media studies or photography, even if he achieves the required degree with a minimum of a lower second.
He could consider becoming a primary school teacher, and either enrols on an undergraduate degree leading to QTS or takes a subject degree and then competes with other graduates for one of the places, perhaps on an Apprenticeship.
He would be well advised to undertake some youth work either as a part of his degree course or as a voluntary activity as this might strengthen his chance of being accepted. It is unlikely that he would have a degree in a subject acceptable to Teach First, and there is a strong chance that he would have to pay fees and take out a loan to support his living costs through his training.
As the range of degrees available at universities becomes ever more diverse, so the link between the higher education experience and the needs of schools in terms of curriculum delivery becomes ever more decoupled. This may not seem to matter for much of the primary sector, where direct curriculum knowledge may not be required, but even at that level a need to understand the fundamentals of a subject may be important in both teaching it well and also in helping other teachers to deliver the subject as well.
Nationally, the recruitment campaigns are generic and don’t focus on any particular groups in society. Should they take these different motivations into account and should the DfE consider these issues when deciding upon the operation of the Teacher Supply Model?
I might add that the DfE has thought about issues around race, gender and disability in terms of teacher recruitment ever since 1997.
Summary of final year postgraduate trainee outcomes for the 2020/21 academic year
| Percentage awarded QTS | Percentage of those awarded QTS teaching in a state school | ||
| Age | Under 25 | 90 | 72 |
| 25 and Over | 86 | 73 | |
| Disability | Declared | 81 | 68 |
| None declared | 88 | 73 | |
| Ethnic group | Asian | 81 | 64 |
| Black | 78 | 65 | |
| Mixed ethnicity | 86 | 72 | |
| Other | 82 | 66 | |
| White | 89 | 74 | |
| Gender | Male | 84 | 71 |
| Female | 89 | 73 |
Source DfE
I find this table deeply disturbing in many ways, but we don’t have time today to do more than note that to belong to a minority group seems to be a challenge when finding a teaching post in a state school.
Anyway, after that digression, back to our main thesis about the labour market for teachers and the working of the Teacher Supply Model.
After taking into account flows out of teaching to other careers; to retirement or other non-work situations, such as a career break; or in a small number of cases death, the Model looks at the number of possible returners and those switching from part-time to full-time or in the other direction.
Trends in pupil numbers also need to be factored into the Model along with any possible policy changes affecting teacher numbers, such as when the Key Stage 1 maximum class size policy was introduced by David Blunkett. These days, such policy changes are rare. More challenging to predict is how schools will use their budgets, and the modelling process largely ignores this variable when considering teacher numbers and how they will change. This is an interesting area for debate, especially at the present time when schools are more financially challenged than for many years.
Because policy changes often cannot be predicted., especially as with the Key Stage 1 maximum class size rule the policy often comes after a change of government. The Teacher Supply Model must inevitably be forward looking, and even if there is no change of government, Ministers are often unwilling to flag policy changes too far in advance for party political reasons.
The Teacher Supply Model currently being discussed by the DfE will apply to the number of teacher preparation places in 2023/24 and will not impact upon the labour market for teachers until September 2024.
Because the Model is a national Model, and is created by statisticians, its role is to provide overall numbers for the primary sector and numbers by selected subjects for the secondary sector.
Herein lies another issue. What constitutes a subject? For any years, Science was a subject, as Modern Languages still is. The Model created a total for science teachers needed. The science community argued for many years that there was a need for separate totals for Biology, Chemistry and Physics with an apparent lack of concern for any other ‘science’ subject. Eventually, the DfE agreed and total for each science were created.
The unintended consequence of this move was to limit the number of biologists recruited into teaching and thus to reduce the overall number of science teachers in training. We only have to look back at Kevin with his forensic science degree to debate the wisdom of a lack of any ‘general science’ route into teaching. This is one for the science community from the Royal Society outwards to re-visit.
I think that is quite enough background on the Teacher Supply Model. Let’s now move to the real world from the abstract discussions, important though they are, about overall numbers.
Of course, if those numbers, whether called allocations, targets or by some other name, are not met then schools may find recruiting teachers more of a challenge.
Whose responsibility is it to meet that challenge?
The government
Higher education
Schools?
Without a coherent strategy to either avoid or deal with any shortfall of teachers, it will be pupils that eventually feel the consequences though curriculum change, larger groups or being taught by less than adequately equipped teachers in terms of the teacher’s knowledge and backgrounds regardless of whether they teach early years or KS5 physics.
The government can gain relief when pupil numbers reduce, usually following a sustained fall in the birth rate, as we have seen recently after the big increases of more than a decade ago.
Chart of pupil demography
Relief may also come from more returners than normal and fewer departures from the profession whether for career breaks or to other forms of employment.
For the purpose of illustration during the rest of this talk I will be concentrating upon the secondary sector. This is partly because there are fewer issues in the classroom teacher market for the primary sector, although I acknowledge that following the recent re-accreditation exercise the future is opaquer than it has been in the past.
Before looking at the current position in terms of recruitment in Oxfordshire across the secondary sector during 2022 it is worth noting that the national ITT position for this year based upon the comparison of trainee numbers with classroom teacher vacancies for a range of secondary school subjects.
| Subject | 1/1/22 – 30/9/2022 |
| History | 44% |
| PE | 23% |
| Art | 12% |
| Geography | -157% |
| Languages | -108% |
| English | -57% |
| All Sciences | -84% |
| RE | -108% |
| Mathematics | -45% |
| Music | -96% |
| Computer Studies + IT | -137% |
| D&T | -583% |
| Business Studies | -313% |
The chart is created by matching the number of trainees in the DfE ITT census for 2021-22 with the number of vacancies recorded by TeachVac during the 2022 calendar year starting at 1st January. The chart records the position in terms of the remaining ITT pool at Friday 30th September. The remaining pool is arrived at by reducing the ITT number by one trainee for every two vacancies since the DfE data suggests that around a half of classroom teacher vacancies each year are filled from the trainee pool.
Negative numbers indicate more vacancies than there were trainees. There are, of course, issues with the methodology, since vacancies that are re-advertisements may legitimately be included, but repeat advertisement should not be taken into account.
Only in history, PE and art were there still positive numbers at the end of September and art is likely to turn negative before all the January 2023 vacancies are filled.
To put the data into context. Here was the ITT Census data from last December.
| 2013/14 | 2019/2020 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | |
| Percentage of Target at census date | % | % | % | % |
| Mathematics | 86 | 65 | 84 | 95 |
| English | 136 | 110 | 127 | 118 |
| Modern Languages | 85 | 64 | 74 | 71 |
| Biology | 163 | 189 | 117 | |
| Physics | 42 | 45 | 22 | |
| Chemistry | 67 | 80 | 105 | |
| Physical Education | 138 | 105 | 135 | 164 |
| Other | 57 | 82 | 25 | |
| Design & Technology | 45 | 42 | 75 | 23 |
| History | 150 | 115 | 175 | 199 |
| Geography | 100 | 118 | 130 | 86 |
| Computing | 63 | 75 | 105 | 69 |
| Art & Design | 136 | 62 | 132 | 140 |
| Religious Education | 82 | 94 | 128 | 99 |
| Music | 97 | 80 | 125 | 72 |
| Drama | 157 | |||
| Business Studies | 88 | 53 | 102 | 45 |
2021 ITT Census – DfE
Looking at both primary and secondary total the following picture emerges
| 2013/14 | 2019/2020 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | |
| All Secondary | 98 | 83 | 106 | 82 |
| Inc TF | Inc TF | Inc TF | ||
| Primary | 99 | 94 | 130 | 136 |
| Inc TF | Inc TF | Inc TF |
What is noticeable, is the effect of the covid pandemic on recruitment into teaching as a career. There was a significant bounce in interest about teaching as a career after the pandemic struck in March 2020 that saw an increase in applications to train as a teacher. However, it was short-lived and did not continue into the recruitment round for courses that stated in the autumn of 2021 for the secondary sector, although trainee numbers remained above target in the primary sector.
It is worth recalling that there was talk of significant failures in the economy, and teaching always attracts more applicants when the economy and the wider labour market is faring badly.
So, now let’s look at Oxfordshire and the local labour market for teachers before finally considering the relationship between local demand and supply of new teachers into the labour market.
Frist, the primary sector. This table is for vacancies for classroom teachers with No TLR attached. Basically, an entry level grade
Oxfordshire Classroom teacher vacancies January to September 2022
| CLASSROOM TEACHER – NO TLR | ||||
| INDEPENDENT | STATE | TOTAL | % INDEPENDENT SECTOR | |
| PRIMARY | 32 | 348 | 380 | 8% |
I am surprised how low the percentage is, so, what about the secondary sector? For ease of comparison, TeachVac groups subjects together into a number of larger units. This partly because the range of titles used by schools when recruiting is so vast that it is unhelpful for the purpose of analysis to use the whole range when they can be reduced to a smaller number of composite groupings.
| SECONDARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM TEACHER VACANCIES NO TLRS | ||||
| SUBJECT GROUPS OXFORDSHIRE | Independent | State | TOTAL JANUARY TO END SEPTEMBER 2022 | % INDEPENDENT SECTOR |
| BUSINESS STUDIES | 42 | 9 | 51 | 82% |
| SEN | 12 | 8 | 20 | 60% |
| SOCIAL STUDIES | 35 | 35 | 70 | 50% |
| LANGUAGES | 23 | 25 | 48 | 48% |
| ART | 9 | 10 | 19 | 47% |
| ENGLISH | 44 | 56 | 100 | 44% |
| IT/COMPUTING | 21 | 27 | 48 | 44% |
| MATHEMATICS | 52 | 76 | 128 | 41% |
| SCIENCE | 79 | 116 | 195 | 41% |
| DANCE | 7 | 11 | 18 | 39% |
| PE | 11 | 21 | 32 | 34% |
| HISTORY | 9 | 20 | 29 | 31% |
| GEOGRAPHY | 10 | 25 | 35 | 29% |
| HUMANITIES | 4 | 11 | 15 | 27% |
| MUSIC | 4 | 18 | 22 | 18% |
| VOCATIONAL | 1 | 5 | 6 | 17% |
| RE | 3 | 23 | 26 | 12% |
| D&T | 4 | 63 | 67 | 6% |
| Grand Total | 370 | 559 | 929 | 40% |
On average, across Oxfordshire, the independent sector was responsible for 40% of the vacancies for classroom teachers advertised during the first nine months of 2022. The percentages range from 82% of basic grade vacancies in business studies, to just 6% of vacancies in Design and technology. Interestingly, the independent sector percentage for Business studies reduces to 71% if you add in posts with TLRs.
The list of schools advertising for business studies is interesting
| School | Independent | State | Total |
| Cranford House School Trust Limited | 8 | 8 | |
| d’Overbroeck’s | 4 | 4 | |
| Faringdon Community College | 1 | 1 | |
| Kings Education (Oxford) | 7 | 7 | |
| Lord Williams’s School | 2 | 2 | |
| Magdalen College School | 1 | 1 | |
| Matthew Arnold School | 1 | 1 | |
| Oxford International College | 3 | 3 | |
| Oxford Sixth Form College | 6 | 6 | |
| Shiplake College | 7 | 7 | |
| St Clare’s, Oxford | 1 | 1 | |
| The Bicester School | 2 | 2 | |
| The Oratory School | 5 | 5 | |
| The Oxford Academy | 1 | 1 | |
| The Warriner School | 1 | 1 | |
| Wheatley Park School | 1 | 1 | |
| Grand Total | 42 | 9 | 51 |
This is for Main Grade posts. Add in TLRs and the picture changes slightly.
| School | Independent | State | Total |
| Aureus School | 3 | 3 | |
| Cranford House School Trust Limited | 8 | 8 | |
| d’Overbroeck’s | 6 | 6 | |
| Faringdon Community College | 1 | 1 | |
| King Alfred’s | 3 | 3 | |
| Kingham Hill School | 2 | 2 | |
| Kings Education (Oxford) | 7 | 7 | |
| Lord Williams’s School | 2 | 2 | |
| Magdalen College School | 1 | 1 | |
| Matthew Arnold School | 1 | 1 | |
| Our Lady’s Abingdon | 4 | 4 | |
| Oxford International College | 3 | 3 | |
| Oxford Sixth Form College | 6 | 6 | |
| Oxford Spires Academy | 3 | 3 | |
| Shiplake College | 7 | 7 | |
| St Clare’s, Oxford | 1 | 1 | |
| St Edward’s School | 1 | 1 | |
| The Bicester School | 2 | 2 | |
| The Cherwell School | 1 | 1 | |
| The Oratory School | 6 | 6 | |
| The Oxford Academy | 1 | 1 | |
| The Warriner School | 1 | 1 | |
| UTC Oxfordshire | 2 | 2 | |
| Wheatley Park School | 1 | 1 | |
| Grand Total | 52 | 21 | 73 |
Maybe the State sector is more alive to market conditions in this subject than some independent schools that have placed multiple advertisements to try to appoint a classroom teacher in this subject.
In passing, it is worth noting that the DfE records 41 state secondary schools in Oxfordshire and 47 schools in the independent sector, although that total does contain both special schools and sixth form colleges as well as schools serving the primary age-group of pupils. Nevertheless, the number of secondary schools in the independent sector in Oxfordshire is not far short of the number of state secondary schools, although the number of pupils is many fewer. However, that number is offset by the extra demand for teachers to staff the smaller classes normally found in the private sector schools.
One feature of the private sector schools in Oxfordshire is the number of boarding schools across the county. Boarding schools are as likely to cater for students from outside the United Kingdom and as such form an important part of the education export market by attracting foreign currency earnings. In additional to the ‘normal’ type of school, there are also tutorial colleges offering specific courses often for ‘A’ level or other pre-higher education programme that will be looking to recruit from the same pool of teachers as well as recruiting other non-teachers, such as graduate students to teach some courses.
So, there are more than 80 schools in Oxfordshire educating pupils of secondary school age, and together they have generated 929 advertisements for classroom teachers between January and the end of September. After allowing for re-advertisements and expectations for the coming three months, it seems likely that across the whole of 2022 there will have been a demand for around 1,000 secondary school classroom teachers in Oxfordshire.
As many of you know, the DfE has recently concluded a re-accreditation process for ITT. All three providers in Oxfordshire were listed by the DfE in the approved list.
The University of Oxford cites the number of places for 2023/24 as c184 on the PGCE in the following subjects
- English
- geography
- history
- mathematics
- modern languages (French, German, Spanish, Mandarin)
- religious education
- science (biology, chemistry, physics).
The Oxfordshire Teacher Training Programme, based at the River Learning Trust does not provide data on trainee numbers. They state on their website that:
“We don’t advertise a specific number of places available for most subjects.”
The programme does cover a wider range of secondary school subjects than the University
However, I doubt that they would be able to make up the difference between the Oxford University provision and the demand from schools identified in the table I showed earlier as that might require them to train several hundred students a year.
I do not believe that Oxfordshire is unique in facing a significant deficit between the number of ITT trainees and the demand for teachers from secondary schools, but the scale of the problem may be more significant than in many other parts of the country.
One solution is the growing number of training providers that claim in their publicity, and their titles, to be ‘National’ in their training coverage. One such is the new National Institute of teaching formed, with government approval by a small number of MATs. They say in their publicity that
‘The NIoT is working with a network of Associate Colleges across the country. These successful groups of schools work with a wide variety of communities across the country’
I note that they have no presence in this part of England. However, this ‘nationalisation’ of training into fewer larger providers is a trend that will need watching.
Of course, both the independent sector and state secondary schools in Oxfordshire have the option to employ staff without Qualified Teacher Status. The term ‘teacher’ is not a reserved occupation term like ‘engineer’, ‘solicitor’ or ‘accountant’, so anyone may be called a teacher regardless of their background and qualifications.
Excess demand over supply causes other problems including a high level of spending on recruitment. There is also the issue of whether some schools either because of location or the characteristics of the school find recruitment more challenging than other schools?
There isn’t time today to delved deeply into that question, although I have written on my blog at www.johnohowson.wordpress.com about the issue of the percentage of free school meals pupils in a school and teacher recruitment.
There is no doubt that the high cost of accommodation in Oxfordshire has an effect of recruitment of teaching staff.
Can anything more be achieved to ensure schools, and especially state schools in Oxfordshire are able to recruit sufficient teachers in all subjects?
I doubt we will ever see the days again when local authorities and the Christian churches provided most of the training places for teachers and the then Ministry of Education issued an annual Circular on the number of new teachers each local authority could employ to ensure some degree of fairness at least at that level.
Indeed, it is not clear which organisation can speak on behalf of the needs of schools across the county for a dialogue about the need for sufficient teacher preparation places in Oxfordshire to meet the needs of local schools. Perhaps, the Schools Forum might take on the responsibility? I am also gratified to hear that the DfE Steering group might have a look at ‘cold spots’ in ITT. However, that raises another issue about the availability of school placements and whether those that train as teachers should be expected to work in state-funded schools? The answer to this was clear-cut when trainee’s fees were paid and there was a training grant for all. It is, perhaps, more complex now trainees bear a greater or lesser degree of the costs depending upon their subject or sector.
In conclusion, the failure to train sufficient teachers puts the system under strain. Oxfordshire, with a growing number of secondary schools and nearly as many private schools and tutorial colleges as state-funded secondary schools faces an interesting set of issues in terms of ensuring sufficient appropriately qualified teachers for all its schools.
The modified market model where places are allocated by central government, but schools and trainees compete for vacancies works better for some than others. To return to our four potential teachers, two, Jane and Wayne, can train and teach anywhere, but Kevin and Helen are more closely tied to their local area both for training and for employment. The system hasn’t taken their needs into account and I worry that following the re-accreditation process the needs of candidates have once again not been taken into account.
This lack of an overall policy towards the staffing of our schools as opposed to just predicting training numbers might matter less if sufficient trainees were recruited to fill the places on preparation courses. The fact that there has not been enough to satisfy the predictions of the Teacher Supply Model for several years, across many secondary sector subjects just make smatters worse.
I am conscious that in a university like Brookes, known for training teachers for the primary sector, I have spent most of my talk discussing the secondary school sector. That doesn’t mean that the primary sector isn’t important and monitoring its health is equally as important. However, demand for primary teaching posts at the classroom teachers level remains generally healthy, and the current tissues are mainly in the secondary sector.
I also haven’t had time today to reflect on either middle or senior leadership issues or on the issue of SEND and special school staffing. Perhaps, those could be the topic for another day.
Thank you for listening
Prof. John Howson
October 2022
John Howson 